CEDAR FALLS - Your mother was right.

Always wear clean underwear because you may be in an accident - or something else might happen, like accidentally dropping your drawers while watching a parade.

"That's the object lesson of the play," said Theatre UNI Director Jay Edelnant, laughing as he described the premise in "The Underpants," the Steve Martin comedy being performed Friday through next Sunday at the Strayer-Wood Theatre on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

Written by Carl Sternheim in 1910 and adapted for modern audiences by comedian/actor Martin, the play reveals the consequences that ensue when a young wife's underpants unintentionally fall to her ankles while on the street during a parade for the King. The New York Post called the play "a brilliant, hilarious, mad adaptation," and Record called it "a careening combination of sex farce, comedy and social commentary."

The wife becomes the subject of amorous attention from several men, excluding her husband. He bullies his wife and is terrified the scandal will mean the loss of his mid-level bureaucratic job after her immodest flash. He is oblivious to her sudden elevation to an object of desire.

Sternheim was a famous German playwright, satirist and essayist and the first publisher of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," Edelnant explained.

"He was one of the founders of the German Expressionist Movement after World War I and at the center of a group of German-Jewish intellectuals. 'The Underpants" was the first play in a cycle of devastating plays about the smugness of the German bourgeoise," he said.

Martin, who successfully adapted the play, "Cyrano de Bergerac" into the film "Roxanne," and the novel Silas Marner into the film, "A Simple Twist of Fate," employs his sense of physical comedy and language.

"The language is high diction, not crude, but the subject is sexual and there is a lot of underwear on stage," Edelnant said. "It's not a door-slamming farce but it is very funny. After 'Death of a Salesman' and the enormous effort that took for the entire theater department and the seriousness of the play, we wanted to do something lighter, something humorous and 'The Underpants' has been on our list a number of years."

Theatre UNI's production of "The Underpants" features Kiera Lynn (Perry) as the wife Louise and William Hahn (Norway) as her husband Theo. Additional cast members include Meredith Hogeland (Cedar Falls), Russell Boyce (Guttenburg), Michael Owen Achenbach (Spirit Lake), Sam Garles (Fairfield) and Hans Pregler (Waverly).

Production designers include staff designer Mark A. Parrott (scenery), and senior theater majors Jason Reed (lighting) and Christina Carr (hair and makeup). Travis Walker, a new graduate of UNI from Dubuque, is serving as costume coordinator, and Hans Pregler, sound coordinator.